December 16, 2009

By Matthew M. Hausman

President Obama’s announcement regarding U.S. military strategy in Afghanistan – after three months of indecision – brought partisan hypocrisy into sharp focus. He owed his election to a cult of personality and the promise of change, but his aura lost much of its luster as the country found itself still mired in economic crisis and embroiled in two wars after his first year in office. Polls show that the independent voters who were essential to his victory are not likely to support him again because the reality did not reinforce the promise.

The same introspection cannot be found among his political acolytes, however, who continue to enable what is shaping up to be a dubious foreign policy administration. And nowhere is this more apparent than in the post-election silence of the antiwar protestors.
When Bush was in office the political left regularly vented its spleen over the war in Iraq, and to a lesser degree Afghanistan, missing no opportunity to protest his administration’s foreign policy shortcomings.

The protests generally sounded similar themes: e.g., that the war in Iraq was predicated on lies concerning weapons of mass destruction; that Mideast intervention was about oil; and that Israel and a cabal of neocons (i.e., Jews) were pulling strings from the shadows. There are certainly valid criticisms of the Iraq war – from the initial policy justification to the long-range strategy and goals. But left-wing dissent was often personal in its focus on Bush the man, narrow in its denigration of potential Republican successors, and discordant in its failure to maintain a consistent tone reflecting a philosophical abhorrence to war. The apparent moral incongruity was reflected by two characteristic features of the antiwar movement: its virtual hibernation after Obama’s election and its preoccupation with Israel.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan didn’t disappear with Obama’s election, but the antiwar movement for the most part fell into quiet senescence after his inauguration. Moveon.Org had promoted strident protests throughout Bush’s tenure and during the 2008 presidential campaign, but faded back after Obama’s victory and was mostly silent regarding his failure to depart from Bush’s military policies. The organization only broke its silence after Obama finally disclosed his plan to increase troop levels in Afghanistan, and only then by calling on him to announce an exit strategy. Noticeably absent were any ad hominem attacks against Mr. Obama for his pledge to increase American involvement. Certainly, there were no criticisms as vehement as those directed against Bush during the surge in Iraq.

Although other left-wing groups were relatively silent regarding Obama’s war policy – at least until his announcement regarding Afghanistan – they remained extremely vocal concerning matters they apparently considered of greater importance. For example, the ANSWER (“Act Now to Stop War and End Racism”) Coalition offered only muted criticism of the Obama Administration’s military policies, and never with the same intensity previously reserved for Bush.

However, the organization never wavered in its excoriation of Israel. Only last June, ANSWER helped organize “Gaza Solidarity Day” to mark the anniversary of the seizure of Gaza during the Six-Day War – despite Israel’s unilateral disengagement four years previously. It also collaborated in the “Viva Palestina Caravan,” a traveling propaganda circus to Gaza that started on the Fourth of July. Although the “caravan” was described as a humanitarian event, ANSWER never expressed the same humanitarian compassion for Jewish civilians in Southern Israel who were subjected to Hamas missile attacks for years, or for Arab civilians against whom Hamas committed atrocities and war crimes during the Gaza War.

Apparently, ANSWER finds it acceptable to support groups such as Viva Palestina, with known links to Hamas, but will never chastise Hamas and other terrorist organizations for murdering civilian men, women and children in derogation of international law.

Obama’s announcement concerning his Afghanistan strategy finally stirred ANSWER out of its slumber regarding the American war effort, but its propaganda campaign against Israel required no such nudging because it had never abated. ANSWER has consistently singled out Israel for criticism, falsely accusing her of war crimes without ever condemning Arab terror, repeating the propaganda myth that she is an apartheid state, and expressing support for terror organizations that attack and murder Israeli and Arab civilians.

ANSWER has never been shy about its malice for Israel, but its enmity seemed to reach unprecedented heights during the Gaza War, during which its rallies were replete with signs displaying ugly slogans culled from the classical antisemitic canon. Many of its constituents labeled Israel a racist state, burned the Israeli flag, and compared Israelis to Nazis – often comparing the Magen David to the Swastika. Participants in its rallies carried placards, signs and banners containing crude antisemitic hate speech in the form of slogans such as: “Zionism is ethnic cleansing”; “Palestine is our land and the Jews are our dogs”; “Khaybar, Khaybar, oh Jews, the army of Muhammad will return”; “Get Israel out of the U.S. Congress”; “First Jesus, Now Arafat, Stop the Killers”; “Freedom Fighters Not Suicide Bombers and propaganda.”

While the antiwar activities of ANSWER since Obama’s election did not have the same intensity as during the days of the Bush Administration, its anti-Israel activities seemed to grow ever shriller and more vulgar. The signs and slogans, as well as the reflexive repetition of the revisionist Arab narrative, offer chilling counter-evidence for any who still naively argue that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism. The capstone of ANSWER’s systematic Israel-bashing was the “National Day of Action,” which it helped to organize on December 30, 2008. The day was marked by rallies held before federal buildings, Israeli consulates and embassies across the country, where demonstrators spouted anti-Israel and antisemitic rhetoric and voiced enthusiastic support for terrorist groups bent on Israel’s destruction.

The conduct of these and similar organizations suggests that the raison d’être for their protest activities is not specifically to stimulate dialogue regarding American military policy in Iraq and Afghanistan. Rather, their primary motivation is to advance an overarching political agenda in which antiwar protests are more relevant when there are Republicans in the White House and when Israel is demonized for political effect. Clearly, these groups are reluctant to criticize an Administration they helped to elect and with whose social and political agenda they agree. They don’t approve of American involvement in either war, but they are loathe to embarrass the man they’ve anointed a savior. And their persistent pathological focus on Israel is consistent with their overall affinity for a presidency that from its first days has exhibited the same undeniable anti-Israel bias, often abetted by left-wing Jewish groups such as J Street.

As it was during the election, the American media has been complicit in enabling Obama and advancing his agenda. The media critics who were so hard on President Bush (who certainly made his share of mistakes), and who attempted to portray John McCain as merely a Bush clone, have been silent or restrained in their comments regarding Obama’s handling of the wars. Or they’ve simply continued to blame the prior administration for the status quo. A glaring example of the mainstream media’s bias was its refusal to cover the antiwar protestor Cindy Sheehan when she finally aimed her critical barbs at Obama for continuing American military involvement in the Mideast. Although there was no shortage of news coverage for Sheehan when she camped outside of Bush’s ranch in Texas, she was all but ignored when she turned her criticism against the current Administration.

The hypocrisy of today’s antiwar movement and the news media is conspicuous when compared to the actions of their antecedents during the 1960s. During the Vietnam era, the media was relentless in its coverage of the protest movement and stalwart in its condemnation of U.S. policy in Southeast Asia. Neither the press nor the protestors were reluctant to criticize President Johnson simply because they agreed with his domestic political agenda. Indeed, Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” was perhaps the most progressive American social and political agenda of the last century. Nevertheless, the media and the antiwar movement vociferously attacked him for escalating American involvement; and their unrelenting criticism was the reason he chose not to seek reelection in 1968.

Interestingly, just as Johnson’s antiwar critics were not distracted by their affinity for his political agenda, neither were they cowed by the knowledge that he had been elected in 1964 by a decisive landslide, which was used to justify his claim of a clear mandate for his domestic policies and social programs. In contrast, today’s antiwar advocates have been reluctant to criticize Obama for any reason, often rationalizing their reticence by invoking what they claim was his commanding electoral mandate last November.

But in truth Obama won the popular vote by only five to six percentage points. His victory was hardly a landslide and thus represented no national referendum. In fact, without the independent voters who have since abandoned him, Obama would have lost by a wide margin. However, his margin of victory – real or imagined – is at best a pale justification for discouraging critical debate of his policies when one considers that President Johnson, who indeed won by a true landslide, was afforded no moral buffer from the aspersions of his liberal constituency regarding his war policies.

The pretense of today’s antiwar left is even more pronounced considering its silence regarding Obama’s failure to advocate for what they claim are the true virtues of American society – democracy, human rights and freedom for oppressed minorities. Despite empty homages, the President has trampled these values by inter alia turning his back on the pro-democracy movement in Iran, snubbing the Dalai Lama to avoid offending China, embracing dictators such as Hugo Chavez and Manual Zelaya, championing the despicable U.N. Human Rights Council, indulging the Arab-Muslim world with revisionist adulation, and treating Israel, the only democracy in the Mideast, with patronizing contempt.

This pattern is consistent with the agenda and goals of the radical left that has co-opted the antiwar movement, and which routinely condemns America and Israel while ignoring the extremist racism of those it deems worthy of self-determination. It seems curious that they condemn Zionism, which is truly a movement of national liberation and regeneration, while advancing a reactionary Palestinian narrative that is predicated on revisionist history. But the so-called nation of Palestine is no more a historical reality than Esperanto is a natural language. That the Palestinian national movement has no historical basis and is rooted in Muslim antisemitism underscores the true motivations of those who vilify Israel. These motivations have been underscored by the antisemitic slogans emblazoned on the signs that have been prominently displayed at rallies ostensibly protesting U.S. military endeavors abroad.

Although Mr. Obama does not officially endorse such crass rhetoric, neither has he acknowledged its pervasiveness nor roundly condemned it. By treating Israel as a vassal state, and by appropriating the term “the occupation” from Arab propaganda and using it to describe Israeli presence on ancestral Jewish soil, he actually reinforces the rhetoric. Moreover, by employing such highly charged language, Obama clearly undercuts the legitimacy of Israel, a vibrant country with a lengthy and undeniable history, in favor of a country – “Palestine” – that never existed.

Unfortunately, this anti-Israel subtext serves as an article of faith for many of today’s antiwar ideologues, making it difficult for Jews who might in good conscience oppose the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to fully embrace the antiwar agenda without having to compromise or abandon their own support for the State of Israel. Clearly, not all those who oppose the wars are radical extremists – some are relative moderates whose opposition is based on conscientious analysis and belief. Yet, it is difficult for true moderates to immerse themselves fully in a movement that is increasingly identified with extremist positions and a radical hatred of Israel that freely deals in classical antisemitic stereotypes.

Moreover, the conduct of many antiwar activists is internally inconsistent because it is stimulated more by who occupies the White House than by the ongoing state of war. If their primary goal were truly to galvanize antiwar sentiments by raising awareness and influencing public opinion, they should not curb their protest activities in deference to the liberal Democratic administration that supplanted the prior Republican regime. If anything, their protests should grow louder because the president they worked so hard to elect – the one who represents their partisan agenda – has abandoned part of that agenda by failing to fulfill his campaign promise to implement an exit strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan. The general failure of so many antiwar advocates to criticize Obama bespeaks a philosophical incongruity that undercuts the clarity of their motives and calls into question their ideological integrity.

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